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In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
The task system is a system of labor under slavery characteristic in the Americas. It is usually regarded as less brutal than other forms of enslaved persons' labor. Under this system, each enslaved person is assigned a specific task to complete for the day. After that task is finished, the enslaved person is then free to do as he or she wishes with the remaining time. The other slavery system of labor, known as the gang system, was harsher. The gang system forced the enslaved people to work until the planter said they were finished and allowed them almost no freedom. Whether planters organized their enslaved people on the task or gang system had much to do with the type of crops they harvested. Tobacco, rice and sugar cultivation was organized into gangs since those crops required considerable processing and supervision. Coffee, cotton, and pimento were comparatively hardier plants where extensive supervision was unnecessary, leading planters to favor the task system on their plantations.
Task systems are mathematical objects used to model the set of possible configurations of online algorithms. They were introduced by Borodin, Linial and Saks (1992) to model a variety of online problems. A task system determines a set of states and costs to change states. Task systems obtain as input a sequence of requests such that each request assigns processing times to the states. The objective of an online algorithm for task systems is to create a schedule that minimizes the overall cost incurred due to processing the tasks with respect to the states and due to the cost to change states. If the cost function to change states is a metric, the task system is a metrical task system (MTS). This is the most common type of task systems. Metrical task systems generalize online problems such as paging, list accessing, and the k-server problem (in finite spaces).
The Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) is a set of codes designed to standardize categorization and facilitate the analysis of legal work and expenses. UTBMS was produced through a collaborative effort among the American Bar Association Section of Litigation, the American Corporate Counsel Association, and a group of major corporate clients and law firms coordinated and supported by Price Waterhouse LLP (now PricewaterhouseCoopers). UTBMS codes are now maintained and developed by the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) Oversight Committee.
The gang system is a system of division of labor within slavery on a plantation. It is the more brutal of two main types of labor systems. The other form, known as the task system, was less harsh and allowed the slaves more self-governance than the gang system did. The gang system allowed continuous work at the same pace throughout the day. The first gang, or "great gang," was given the hardest work, for the fittest slaves. The second gang, consisting of less able slaves, was given lighter work, and the third gang was given the easiest work. As an example, the planting gang in the McDuffie plantation was split into three classes (as quoted by Metzer): The 1st class, consisting of the best workers, "...those of good judgement and quick motion..." The 2nd class, who were the most inefficient and weakest. The 3rd class, made up of children. The first class created small holes in the ground, spaced apart for cotton seeds. The second class then dropped cotton seeds in these holes and the 3rd class covered them with dirt. In the United States, the gang system developed in the nineteenth century and is characteristic of the ante-bellum period (c. 1820–1865). It is especially associated with cotton production in the Deep South, but also is associated with tobacco and sugar production. Rice plantations in Carolina, for example, never adopted a gang system of labor. The idea of a gang system is that enslaved workers would work all day (traditionally, from sunrise to sunset) under the supervision of an overseer. Breaks for lunch and dinner were part of the system. This is opposed to the task system, under which the worker is released when his assigned task for the day is completed.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker